Our project The Art of Balance/Pandemopraxy is developing along new paths. In the wake of the editorial initiative proposed on the virtual pages of our Journal, Emanuele Bottigella (managing n.o.v.a.civitas, the Architecture Office of Fondazione Pistoletto) asked himself about the post-pandemic future, wondering where and how we will inhabit and use spaces for living and working, in relation to the environment, to sustainability and to people’s mobility. Contextualising and focusing the goals of The Art of Balance on his area of expertise, our colleague has interviewed Carlo Ratti, well-known architect and engineer who directs the Senseable City Lab at Boston MIT and is one of the founding partners of Carlo Ratti Associati (Turin and New York).
Here’s their exchange on architecture, sustainability and transports.
How are the interior layouts of homes and/or workplaces changing?
They are changing a lot, because of the changes occurred in our lives. Perhaps we should start talking about a new ‘Existenzminimum’, that is, reasoning about what the new minimum standards of living in times of Covid-19 are.
This is a concept that goes back to the last century, and to the promise of the young Weimar Republic, even enumerated in the constitution, to provide all citizens with housing with sufficient space and clean air, as well as access to greenery and public transport. In short, ‘healthy housing’. What might be the parameters of the new Existenzminimum at the time of Covid-19? Certainly new spaces to work from home or connect via videoconferencing without the annoying intrusions of half-naked bipeds or quadrupeds. But also access to free air (how much I enjoyed my Boston terrace during the months of lockdown!) and more attention to nature and cleanliness. We can start here to imagine the home of tomorrow. Such an approach also extends to the need for more flexible and secure workspaces.
How would you simplify transportation in the future?
I would distinguish two phases. In the short term, or at least as long as we are forced to coexist with the virus, social distancing will remain necessary. This means that for some time public transport will continue to operate at reduced capacity. After all, cars are not a real alternative: if we all move by car, nobody will be able to move anymore. Micro-mobility, on the other hand, represents a more interesting alternative, capable of combining sustainability and individual scale. Think of scooters or electric scooters or shared bicycles: all these means of transport allow us to both reduce relative pollution and travel without being in close contact with other people.
In the long run, I think that the greater flexibility we’ve gained since Covid-19 will allow us to make better use of infrastructure. A good way of managing the city is not all that different from the approach we’ve taken in recent months to keep the pandemic under control. The mantra we heard repeated at all hours of day and night in the U.S., “flattening the curve,” meant reducing infections so as not to exceed the capacity of the hospital system. Similarly, we need to think about reducing spikes in urban flows to prevent the city from going into overload. This is exactly one of the new challenges of tomorrow.
Can sustainable design help prevent pandemics from recurring in the future?
Pandemics are closely linked to urban history. Cities are by their nature congested and therefore fertile ground for the spread of viruses. Covid-19 has many antecedents. For example, in the mid-fourteenth century, the plague decimated 60% of the population of Venice. This has not prevented us from continuing to crowd its beautiful calli and to press against each other in its theatres in the following centuries: with more or less time, cities have always risen again.
However, I believe that after Covid-19 as planners and researchers we can act on several fronts. I would mention two.
On the one hand, we know that mortality from Covid-19 has been higher in the most polluted areas, as shown by my Harvard colleague Francesca Domenici. It therefore becomes even more urgent to build cities with more attention to the environment and to the reasons for sustainability.
On the other hand, we can imagine developing sensors and data collection systems that help us have a clearer view of the health conditions of our cities. In our laboratory at MIT, for example, in recent years we have worked on the project Underworlds, to monitor the presence of viruses and bacteria in sewage water. This project led to the start-up BioBot, which is today playing a key role in the monitoring of Covid-19 in 300 American cities.
